car accident now car wont start

May 04, 2007 5 Replies

My wife was in a car accident last night where she rear ended someone. She drives a 94 toyota camry le, The front end is pretty messed up but the damage doesnt look like it went to far into the engine compartment. The problem is the car wont start though. The car will crank like normal it just wont start so im wondering if there is an inertia/fuel cutoff switch in this car? if that is not it is there anything else i should take a look at that would be a common problem after an accident? We will be taking it to a mechanic and body shop to have it looked at but we only had liability insurance so no towing and id like to at least get it running so i dont have to get it towed there.



thanks in advance for any ideas on where to start



There is usually a safety cut out switch for rollover. It opens the fuel pump circuit. Did the air bags deploy? If they did, there usually is a cut off switch associated with that as well so the car does not run on after a collision. Check at the attached link to be sure.

Yes the air bags did deploy. thanks for the link i'll go through it.

You need to make sure the airbags get properly fixed. You want the new airbags to go off at the time of a crash while it is occurring, not before (i.e., the cause of the crash). Too often, shops don't know what they're doing or they do, which is ripping people off and endangering them.

A crash severe enough to deploy the air bags probably caused other damage. Check for spark first, make sure the coil wires are still attached and no ground wires have come loose.

Reset the fuel trip. Ford and Toyota are two of the few vehicle manufacturers that provide a trip to shut down the flow of fuel in an accident.

mike

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